(2) Every author and book that is mentioned in the tables has already found a place earlier in this history. Reference to the index at the end will lead to further information.
(3) The chief use of each table is to provide a clear view of some aspect of English literature. To effect this a certain amount of rigidity is unavoidable in the classification. The reader should clearly understand that a greater elasticity of opinion is possible than appears in the tables. Caution, therefore, is necessary in the use of them.
I. PROSE FORMS
| Date | Tale and Romance | Essay | Novel | Miscellaneous |
| Pecock | ||||
| Malory | ||||
| 1500 | ||||
| Utopi | ||||
| Ascham | ||||
| Nash | ||||
| Arcadia | Arcadia | |||
| 1600 | Ford | Bacon | Hooker | |
| Overbury | ||||
| Bacon | ||||
| Burton | ||||
| Browne | ||||
| Boyle | Clarendon | |||
| Dryden | Milton | |||
| Temple | Behn | Dryden | ||
| 1700 | ||||
| Addison | ||||
| Defoe | Steele | Defoe | Swift | |
| Richardson | ||||
| Johnson | Fielding | |||
| Johnson | Goldsmith | Smollett | Burke | |
| Sterne | ||||
| Goldsmith | Gibbon | |||
| 1800 | Coleridge | Austen | ||
| Southey | ||||
| Hazlitt | Scott | |||
| Lamb | Lockhart | |||
| Marryat | Dickens | |||
| Lever | Thackeray | Ruskin | ||
| Borrow | Thackeray | |||
| Stevenson | Meredith | |||
| 1900 | Hardy | Stevenson |
II. THE NOVEL
| Date | Picaresque | Society and Domestic | Historical | Didactic |
| 1500 | ||||
| Utopia | ||||
| The Unfortunate Traveller | Arcadia | |||
| 1600 | ||||
| Head | ||||
| 1700 | Behn | |||
| Addison | ||||
| Defoe | ||||
| Richardson | ||||
| Fielding | Johnson | |||
| Smollett | ||||
| Sterne | Burney | |||
| 1800 | Austen | |||
| Edgeworth | Porter | |||
| Marryat | Scott | |||
| Dickens | Bulwer-Lytton | |||
| Borrow | Thackeray | G. P. R. James | ||
| Meredith | Thackeray | |||
| 1900 | Hardy | Stevenson | Pater |
III. THE ESSAY
| Date | Scientific and Didactic | Literary Criticism | Miscellaneous |
| 1500 | |||
| Apologie for Poetrie | |||
| 1600 | Bacon | ||
| Milton | Cowley | ||
| Dryden | Howell | ||
| 1700 | Locke | Temple | |
| Addison | Addison | ||
| Steele | Steele | ||
| Bolingbroke | Swift | ||
| Hume | Johnson | Johnson | |
| Goldsmith | Goldsmith | ||
| 1800 | |||
| Cobbett | Jeffrey | Hazlitt | |
| Coleridge | Lamb | ||
| Hazlitt | Thackeray | ||
| Carlyle | Froude | ||
| Macaulay | Stevenson | ||
| 1900 | Symonds |
IV. PROSE STYLE
N.B.—In this table the classification is often only approximate.